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In private testimony before the House Benghazi Committee, Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal is asked about the accuracy of the frequent intelligence emails he sent Clinton. Bloomberg News reports: “Blumenthal repeatedly refused to take any ownership of the information in the emails. He told the committee he was just passing on information to Clinton…”

According to one lawmaker attending the hearing, Blumenthal is asked about an October 15, 2011 email he sent to Clinton claiming that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi was hiding in the neighboring country of Chad and was about to be interviewed by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh, when in fact el-Qaddafi was still in Libya and died there five days later. Blumenthal is asked, “Did it turn out to be true?” He responds, “I don’t know,” despite the email clearly being untrue.

Committee Chair Trey Gowdy comments to reporters afterwards, “I am interested in the reliability of the information being presented to our top diplomat, and the reality is, having been in the room all day, [Blumenthal] has absolutely no idea whether the information is credible or not.” (Bloomberg News, 6/17/2015)

Sid Blumenthal on his way to testify before the House Benghazi Committee on June 16, 2015. (Credit: Reuters)

Blumenthal is a Clinton confidant, journalist, and Clinton Foundation employee. He gives the committee nearly 60 emails between him and Clinton about Benghazi and/or Libya that the committee didn’t have before. (CBS News, 6/16/2015) The emails will be publicly released one week later.

However, Committee head Trey Gowdy (R) will reject a request from the Committee’s Democrats and Blumenthal’s attorney to release a transcript of Blumenthal’s nearly nine-hour long testimony. Gowdy will say, “Releasing transcripts can impact the recollections of other witnesses, jeopardize the efficacy of the investigation, alert witnesses to lines of inquiry best not made public, and publicize personal information.” (The Hill, 6/22/2015)

Although Sid Blumenthal testifies before the House Benghazi Committee in a secret session, a Politico article later on the same day as his testimony reveals some of what he says.

Blumenthal, a journalist and private citizen with no security clearance, frequently wrote emails to Clinton that contained detailed intelligence assessments from various parts of the world, especially Libya. Blumenthal reportedly tells the committee that he doesn’t write or even know the ultimate source of any of his Libyan intelligence he sent to Clinton. Instead, he was copying and pasting memos from Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA operative. Blumenthal and Drumheller were involved in a Libya-related business opportunity called Osprey Global Solutions.

Trey Gowdy (R), head of the committee, says, “One of the folks providing [Clinton] the largest volume of information was simply and merely a conduit of someone who may have had business interest in Libya. We have a CIA, so why would you not rely on your own vetted source intelligence agency? In this case, there was no vetting, no analysis of credibility whatsoever.”

Blumenthal claims his advice was unsolicited and he wasn’t being paid for passing on the information. Committee investigators say Blumenthal’s emails about Libya make up more than a third of all of Clinton’s Libya-related emails.

And although Blumenthal was being paid $120,000 a year as an adviser to The Clinton Foundation, he says his salary there “had nothing whatsoever to do with my emails to my friend” Clinton. He also claims the Libyan business venture with Drumheller was a “humanitarian-assistance idea for medical care in which I had little involvement, never got off the ground, in which no money was ever exchanged, no favor sought and which had nothing to do with my sending these emails.” (Politico, 6/16/2015)

Drumheller will die of pancreatic cancer on August 2, 2015, a month and a half later. It’s unclear if he’s questioned by investigators before his death. If Blumenthal got most or all of his intelligence from Drumheller, it’s unclear where Drumheller got it from, since his 25-year CIA career ended in 2005. (The Washington Post, 8/16/2015)